Located in an area with the highest population density in Taiwan, it’s an old house in a 2-meter-wide alleyway in Taipei. Traversing in the alleyways, one gets to directly see all aspects of life in its purest form. Our design retains the structure and exterior walls of the original building. Using the color gray, which is the most neutral color in the city, we freshened up the façade, transforming the urban iron-barred windows and rain canopies into an integrated façade expression with grilles, perforated plates, and H-beams.Entering the interior, the retracted entryway forms a buffer. The rear of the building was originally connected to an adjacent building, but we’ve also retracted the outer wall to form a gap of light, simultaneously resolving the issues of lighting and ventilation at the back.
Because of the narrow shape of the house, we concentrated the vertical flow with stairs on one side of the building to maximize and connect all usable space. The flow goes from the shoe-changing chair at the entryway on the first floor to the sofa, then transforms into a vertical flow of stairs that connects all spaces, ultimately reaching a platform of light with a skylight at the top of the stairwell, stringing together the imaginations of life for the family of three.